2013 Grape Harvest

After we left Amanda at grandma’s in the morning, we headed to Oregon City to collect grapes. This was on Oct. 6th, Sunday.

It is amazing how things change every year. This year some of the grapes were eaten by the birds so you would see stems with nothing on them. Some others had mold on them. But overall it was a very good year. For some reason there were lot more bees around than I remember. Therefore it took us longer to collect all the grapes.

One thing I have to say is that we left home rather late (close to noon). By the time we left Amanda at grandma’s and did couple of other errands, it was about 2 PM when we got there.

We collected a total of 8 buckets (182 lbs) of grapes. Some of the buckets had little bit of space at the top, and I was trying to top them off after we were all done collecting the grapes. In that last minute effort, a bee stung my finger. It was so painful that at that moment I threw all that was in my hand on to the ground (including the bee). The sharp pain was there at least another hour.

Normally we would leave the carboys there for Ron to press the grapes and fill the carboys. I would drive back there to get the grape juice. This year he filled the carboys with the juice from his grapes. We basically swapped our grapes and that saved me an extra trip to Oregon City.

Here is some pictures from 2013 grape harvest in Oregon City.

Stem in the middle of the picture with grapes eaten by birds

Bucket Filling Up

Grapes For You

Little Break

The Row We Worked On

Eight Buckets Done

First Of Two Carboys

Second Carboy

Fermentation Starts

Using WLP 720 sweet wine yeast from White Labs. The name of this liquid yeast may be misleading. This yeast with the chardonnay grapes makes a more mellow chardonnay, definitely not sweet, and not super dry.